RESTAURANT IN ESTABLIMENTS

What Mallorcan cuisine is

A cuisine of Catalan roots, Mediterranean inheritance and using-what-you-have

• Wood-fire grill (parrilla a la leña)

  Embers of olive, holm-oak or almond wood — never gas. Meat and fish go past the fire twice: first hard heat to sear, then pulled to the edge to finish through. The difference with gas is the aromatic smoke and the radiation: gas roasts, wood cooks and perfumes. In Mallorca the wood grill is the method for entrecote, lamb, cuttlefish, sea bass and seasonal vegetables. Without the wood, it's just a flat-top.

• Wood-fired oven (horno de leña)

  A vaulted brick oven, fired with wood until the walls hold heat for hours. Used to bake coques, roast suckling pig (porcella rostida) and lamb, finish the sopas, bake pan moreno. Temperature isn't set on a thermostat — it's set by moving the dish closer to or further from the embers. It's the technique that gives Mallorcan pan moreno its golden crust and damp crumb, and roast lamb its crackling skin.

• Sofregit

  The Catalan-Mediterranean cooking base: finely chopped onion sweated over a low flame for thirty or forty minutes until caramelised, then grated tomato and, depending on the recipe, garlic, paprika and herbs. It's the base of arròs brut, of sopas, of meat stews and pot-cooked rices. If it's done in under twenty minutes, it isn't sofregit — the onion has to lose all its water and turn gold. The difference between an average dish and a good one is usually decided here.

• Escabeche

  Preserving in vinegar, oil, garlic, bay leaf and paprika, applied to fish, partridge, rabbit or mackerel to keep them several days without refrigeration. Pre-fridge technique, recovered today for its flavour. Mallorcan escabeche is discreet on the vinegar — sharp but not aggressive. Goes with salads, served cold as a tapa, extends the season of oily fish. It needs rest: minimum twenty-four hours in the fridge for the flavours to settle.

• Salt-curing (salazón)

  Preserving with salt — the technique behind sobrasada, camaiot, butifarrón, cured ham and dried fish like bacalao. Salt draws the water out of the product and stops bacteria, allowing curing periods of months or years. In Mallorcan cooking, salt-curing is the foundation of the matança — the November or December day when the pig was killed and the year's sausages made. It still continues in rural butchers and family obradors.

• The tumbet method

  Not a technique with a formal name — the principle of tumbet: every vegetable is fried in its own pan, in its own oil, in its own time. Potato first, drained; aubergine next, drained; pepper last. Then layered with concentrated tomato sauce and finished in the oven. The difference with frying everything together is in the texture: a properly made tumbet has every vegetable tender but holding shape. If it comes out wet, the method wasn't applied.